


Of Feints, Reversals, and Ulterior Motives

by AreYouReady



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: But it's unlikely that looking for Par'mach in all the wrong places would happen after this, Canon Compliant, Given Worf's commitment boner, M/M, Sexual Tension, Sparring, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 11:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11758449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreYouReady/pseuds/AreYouReady
Summary: Garak wants to spar on the holodeck. Worf agrees.





	Of Feints, Reversals, and Ulterior Motives

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after Garak's prison term which begins in "Broken Link," and before "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places."

Worf did not understand what the other inhabitants of the station found confusing about his preferences. Was it so strange, wanting to be allowed to keep to himself in a public place, passively letting the roar of the crowd wash over him but not actually speaking to anyone? Why was it that whenever he attempted to sit alone at Quark’s, nursing a bloodwine and quietly observing, at least one person insisted on trying to talk to him? He was considering giving up the habit altogether. The days of Guinan’s omniscient protection in Ten Forward were gone, and he would have to adapt. And that, unfortunately, meant either learning to live with interruptions, or drinking alone in his quarters.

All these thoughts occurred to Worf in the second or so between getting tapped on the shoulder, and turning on his bar stool to either glare at or hit the entity demanding his attention, depending on who it was. Though once he had spun enough to see his assailant, it took him a moment longer than usual to determine their identity, because while the gray, ridged, and scaled face saved him the pain of facial recognition, the bizarreness of _this_ particular person coming up to converse with him in Quark’s shocked him senseless.

The Cardassian. It was the Cardassian, head cocked in petition, shoulders sloped in submission, hand that was not occupied tapping Worf’s shoulder hidden demurely but potentially also deviously behind his back. In his surprise, Worf had forgotten to choose whether he wanted to glare at or hit this particular interloper, and hastily rearranged his expression of slack-jawed confusion into a scowl.

“What do you want, tailor?” he growled, trying to put extra irritation in his tone to make up for his delayed reaction.

“Me? Oh, I was simply wondering if you would be interested in a, hmm, proposal…” Garak looked away, affectedly nervous.

“Yes?” Worf asked. If there was one thing he could not stand, it was people who wasted his time, especially by dancing around their points like a young, arrogant and showy warrior spinning around the sparring floor.

“I find that on this station I get very little in the way of exercise, and our little… altercation on the _Defiant_ proved it to me. It was exhilarating but I was _shamefully_ easily beaten. I would prefer not to repeat that experience with a less _friendly_ foe.” The Cardassian was still being evasive. Worf considered deepening his scowl, but he did not want to appear comical. He raised his eyebrows instead. “Well, I was wondering if you might be interested in a sparring match. Say, tomorrow? 1700?” Garak blinked, slowly. Worf narrowed his eyes. He knew perfectly well that Garak probably could have beaten him on the _Defiant_ all those months ago, had the dice fallen differently. They weren’t quite evenly matched, but there had been at least a chance of the Cardassian winning that struggle. And Worf had the feeling that Garak had, perhaps, not entirely _wanted_ to win; he had given up too easily. There was definitely an ulterior motive here somewhere. Not that that was any particular surprise, but in this case the necessity for an ulterior motive was so great that there might even be more than one.

“Yes,” he answered at last. It would be remiss of him to fail to investigate this. Besides, the struggle on the _Defiant_ had been… exhilarating.

“Lovely. I really must thank you for agreeing to this, tailoring is actually quite a dangerous business you know, you can never be sure how an angry client might choose to express their dissatisfaction. Tomorrow then, 1700 hours. I’ll be in holosuite 2.” Garak nodded to him and turned away before Worf could react. A part of Worf regretted not just hitting Garak when he’d disturbed him. But the thing was done now, they had made an agreement, and Worf would be in holosuite 2 at 1700 tomorrow.

-

The hiss of the holosuite doors was disconcerting, almost as though he hadn’t expected it. Worf stepped through the entrance, blunted practice bat’leth slung over his shoulder, projecting his best forbidding air. He was not nervous, _per se,_ but he was extremely _suspicious_ , and the difference between the two emotions was, at best, debatable, and at worst, semantic.

The room he entered was dimly lit and spacious, but nothing like one of his preferred calisthenics programs. It was a large, square room with mirrored walls and a padded mat on the floor. The only furnishing was a stand on which hung a variety of bladed weapons. Garak stood beside it, wearing a black, high necked tunic and close-fitting pants that Worf guessed were traditional Cardassian exercise wear.

“Welcome, Mr. Worf. I see you brought your bat’leth.” Garak… tutted? Worf bristled at the suggested insult to his ancestral weapon. Garak raised his eyebrows and a placating hand before Worf could speak his offense. “Now, now. I mean no disrespect. Only that a bat’leth is not a particularly effective weapon against a Cardassian. Were we truly in battle, your choice of weapon would give _me_ the advantage.”

“A bat’leth is an elegant and effective melee weapon,” Worf protested.

“A bat’leth is meant for slashing blows, not a good strategy against armored scales,” Garak snapped back.

“A skilled and strong warrior can inflict as much damage with the blunt force of his bat’leth as with the sharp blade,” Worf growled. Garak smiled thinly.

“Ah. I stand corrected, then.” Worf could not tell from Garak’s tone, but he suspected from the Cardassian’s unblinking stare that he was being sarcastic. However, after a moment of tense silence, the discussion seemed to be over. Garak nodded to him, turned to the display of weapons, and selected a pair of thick blades of different lengths. One was only a foot long, the other more like three feet. They were closer to spikes than knives, two inches in diameter at the base, with large hilts for protecting the hands, and arm braces to keep them steady. Much as he prided himself on his knowledge of weapons, Cardassians were a secretive people, and Worf was unfamiliar with their traditional methods of warfare. He did not even know what these were called, let alone what the fighting style that came with them was like. He readjusted his grip on the bat’leth.

“Ready?” he asked, striding forward so that he and Garak were about six feet apart. Garak blinked at him.

“Ready.”

Worf lunged forward and struck in a sweeping stroke, without giving Garak time to prepare, but the Cardassian stepped backward out of range, and the bat’leth whooshed through empty air. Garak used the moment it took for Worf to recover his defensive posture to stab the longer sword at Worf’s torso, a lightning strike that Worf had to sidestep to avoid. With the still swinging bat’leth already compromising his balance, a lesser warrior might have stumbled, and surely Garak was hoping for such an opening. But Worf was not a lesser warrior. He advanced. Compared to the unnamed Cardassian swords, his bat’leth traded reach and agility for weight and strength. His best advantage was close combat. Although that second, shorter blade was going to be a problem.

Worf deflected Garak’s next strike with a flick of his bat’leth, and the grating sound of metal scraping against metal pained his ears. The thrust that had been meant for his breast flew over his left shoulder, and Garak grimaced with discomfort, having overestimated the force and overextended his arm somewhat. Worf debated grinning at him; he normally left expressions off his face during combat, they were an unnecessary tax on his mental resources, but Garak was the sort to be easily goaded by humiliation, and it might make things more interesting. But he ended up deciding against it, by sheer virtue of the fact that Garak’s mistake turned out to be a feint, and he’d had to sidestep again to avoid a quick jab with the dagger.

He tried to turn the tables with a series of fast, concussive slashes, and it seemed to be working: Garak had been able to catch each on his blades, but the force of the blows had driven him backwards, almost to the wall. However, Worf was tiring fast, and he was worried about what Garak would do once he could no longer maintain the force of so many hits in such quick succession.

The dagger proved to be his undoing. On one fateful slash, Garak managed to shove it in one of the gaps between Worf’s blade and handle, twist it until it lodged there, and yank the bat’leth off course. Worf, who was unused to fighting against weapons small enough to pull that particular stunt, and whose arms were burning with exhaustion, was caught off guard, and before he could react, Garak had whirled him around with the bat’leth as a lever arm, and he impacted the mirror with enough force to knock the wind out of his lungs. He felt it shatter, and although the holodeck safety protocols would prevent the mirror shards from cutting his flesh, he knew that once he stepped away from the wall, they would pepper the ground, providing slippery, unstable footing.

Garak advanced, but though Worf was winded, he was still dangerous. He brought his bat’leth to a ready position and waited for Garak to come to him. Garak blinked, raising his eyeridges, and the seemingly-surprised emote took Worf’s attention for just long enough for Garak to get an opening. Locking the bat’leth with his dagger and pushing it aside, he stepped forward so that their torsos were nearly touching. Worf took a sharp breath. Thrown off by the unexpected proximity, he was unable to stop Garak as he thrust the full length of his longer sword through a hole in the bat’leth’s blade, trapping it totally in its already awkward position, and leaving Worf at the Cardassian’s mercy.

Garak lazily brought the dagger up, brushing its tip against Worf’s throat.

“Shall we call it two out of three, then?”

He didn’t even sound out of breath. _P’etaQ._

...No, that was a dishonorable thought. Garak had beaten him in a fair fight. Besides, Worf could feel the rise and fall of his chest, and it gave the lie to his even voice.

The cool, blunted tip of the dagger traced the line of Worf’s windpipe. He was suddenly overly conscious of his own breathing, fast and hard. Each rush of air through his trachea vibrated against the knife at his throat.

“Or perhaps…” Mr. Garak’s voice was quieter and more breathless now, Worf could feel the breath expelled by Garak’s lips more clearly than he could hear the words it carried. The pressure disappeared from his throat, and a moment later he heard the dagger clatter onto the floor with the fragments of mirror.

Garak’s eyes widened slightly, the triumphant curl of his mouth slackening… And Worf took his opportunity. He dropped his bat’leth, leaving Garak supporting its entire weight with the tip of his sword. At the same time, he launched himself and, as a consequence, Garak, off the wall, trusting the blunted shards of mirror to make Garak’s attempts at regaining his footing futile.

The crash of their landing was loud and jarring, but not, at least for Worf, painful. Garak’s face was filled with shock as he gasped silently. After a few seconds, Worf thought to get up on his hands and knees over Garak, so as not to hinder his breathing so much. But he placed a gentle thumb on Garak’s windpipe, to remind him that it was now he who had lost.

“Shall we call it two out of three?” Worf echoed Garak’s earlier words, giving the Cardassian his own grin. He watched pale eyes close for a moment, then open again, as Garak tried to catch his breath. As it returned to him, he began to laugh, quiet and strained. Worf stared at him in confusion, at the crinkled edges of his eyes and the flashes of white teeth and the hiccupy convulsions of his chest.

Then the world spun, and Garak was above him now, while shards of mirror dug into his back, not quite hard enough to bruise. Worf was pinned, though he was fairly sure that if he had to, he could throw Garak off. Better to indulge him for now, though.

“You know, Mr. Worf, I do believe that this counts as two out of three,” Garak smiled, in a tone of voice more suited to a viper than a humanoid. “I think we can both agree that to the winner, belong the spoils, can we not?”

Ah. So here it was. The ulterior motive.

“And what would you define as ‘the spoils,’ tailor?” Worf scowled. It was dishonorable to expect the loser of a bout to keep to stakes he had not agreed to, or even been told of.

“This,” Garak began to lean down, and Worf did not realize his intention in time even to take a breath before Garak’s lips met his.

He opened his mouth instinctually, before he understood the full implications of what was occurring. It took about twenty seconds for him to connect what seemed like a miles-long series of dots in his mind.

And then he threw Garak off.

“I would not consider a man who could not even wind his target ‘the winner,’” Worf grinned, as he straddled Garak, pinned him, and leaned in.


End file.
